Saturday, June 2, 2012

Fourteen-year-old Snigdha Nandipat eluded the guetapens laid by the canities at the Scripps National Spelling Bee as one challenger lost himself in the high vetiver, another came in one Heath bar short of an ericeticolous ending, and the final challenger fell to insufficient schwarmerei for the geistlich unabridged dictionaries that grow like schwannoma on this annual porwigle ridotto.

Round

Contestant

Correct/Incorrect spelling

Meaning

Language

13

Snigdha NandipatiSan Diego, California

guetapens guetapens

ambush, snare, trap

French

12

Stuti MishraWest Melbourne, Florida

schwarmerei schwermerei

unwholesome obsession

German

10

Arvind MahankaliBayside Hills, New York

schwannoma schvonoma

a specific cancer tumor

German

9

Gifton WrightSpanish Town, Jamaica

ericeticolous erosoticolous

living in a heath habitat

Latin

9

Nicholas RushlowPickerington, Ohio

vetiver vetover

an Indian grass or its root

French from Tamil

9

Lena GreenbergPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania

geistlich geistleich

religious, spiritual, sacred

German

8

Frank CahillParker, Colorado

porwigle porwiggle

tadpole, pollywog

Middle English

7

Jordan HoffmanLee's Summit, Missouri

canities conities

graying or whitening of hair

Latin

7

Emma CiereszynskiDover, New Hampshire

ridotto redatto

retreat, place of entertainment

Italian

To force the kids to compete on putatively English words gleaned from foreign and medical dictionaries seems pointless. It seems to me you want your National Spelling Bee champion to win on a good old American word, like incisor (1975) or narcolepsy (1976). In recent years, the contest has been buried alive in an endless stream of obscure words, a vivisepulture (1996) of logorrhea (1999).

I'd be hard pressed to tell you what any of these winning words from 2001-2011 mean without looking them up: succedaneum, prospicience, pococurante, autochthonous, appoggiatura, Ursprache, serrefine, guerdon, Laodicean, stromuhr, and cymotrichous.

If the idea is to introduce American kids to a better appreciation of foreign culture, I'd suggest that next year they simply have the contestants spell each other's names.

It's fun to watch the kids take on the supposed spelling masters, the adults rolling words they've likely never seen before in practiced sentences designed to make the master seem clever. And when the kids ask for the language of derivation, you can tell they don't always buy the pretense that the word has become English.

They use materials from Merriam-Webster. These days a large part of the spelling bee game is learning how to spell words you've never heard before based upon knowing the spelling quirks of various original languages. That certainly knowledge, but not building vocabulary.